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tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  February 15, 2018 6:00pm-7:00pm PST

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around -- >> you're saying the initial story. >> and we presume it's based upon the notion of who he paid off and the intrigue around that but it could very well be. >> a bread crumb trail. >> to look at the path of the money. >> thank you. >> that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> thank you, my friend. >> you bet. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. there is significant breaking news on the robert mueller special counsel investigation. we'll be getting to that in just a moment on this show. it's potentially the biggest advance in mueller's case since guilty plea agreements with two cooperating witnesses were announced in december. we'll be getting to that news in a minute including very apt expert advice as to what it might mean. the biggest news in the country today, however, continues to be the emotional reeling across the country after the mass murder of high school students at a south florida high school yesterday afternoon.
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the 19-year-old alleged mourderr was arraigned today and charged with multiple murder counts. there were reports that the suspect might have been associated with a white supremacist militia, those are claims from a guy in this group in florida. that's not the guy you take his word for it in the absence of any supporting evidence. so in terms of why this happened or whether he had associations of any kind that might change your view. police continue to say the murderer acted alone. if you're looking to a motive, if that makes a difference for the latest gun massachuset cure out hope. for now, he's the suspect.
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he had an a.r. 15 and tons of ammo and all legally acquired. because the laws are lour lawma made on guns welcome a young man in his circumstances to arm himself the way he did, that ends up being the most important thing to know about how he came to a place in his life in this country where he could kill that many people himself. there was no moment of silence today among our lawmakers in washington for this mass cure m masscure. we have the tape. you'll hear the disrepresentation happdisruptio the camera never shows who is
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creating the commotion. it's oddly compelling. watch this. >> the chair notes a disturbance in the gallery and the sergeant of arms will remove those persons responsible and restore order to the gallery. >> they cut the audio at that point. >> the house will be in order. members, please take your seats. >> so you don't see the people disrupting the house there. because the people who are disrupting the house, you can see members of congress looking up at them. those people weren't allowed to have their own camera phones up there. they weren't allowed to document what they were doing themselves but a bunch of people in the house gallery did get arrested today for this.
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this is a photo taken of them after they were released from custody. the protesters today in the house were blind people and deaf people and people who use wheelchairs and people with other disabilities. you can see one man he use as wheelchair getting loaded into a police van after this disruption. a bunch of americans with disabilities got arrested for this same cause two days ago, as well. they were protesting on the house floor today. because today the republican lead house of representatives passed a bill to cut back the ada, americans with disabilities act. congressm congressman who used a wheelchair for decades and a woman that lost both legs spoke against this. congressman john lewis railed against this as civil rights legislation but the republican controlled house passed it today.
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and it passed as a stand alone thing. this isn't part of the bud get or part of a big spending bill or ominous approach where this was a line item. this was its own quiet stand alone bill to get the americans with disabilities act. and nobody campaigns for congress by saying hey, send me to washington. i'm going to gut the americans with disabilities act. nobody says send me to washington, i'm going to stick it to disabled people. send me to washington and when i take my votes, you'll see blind people and people in wheelchairs being hauled out of the gallery in the house and arrested because i'm taking away the most important parts of the most important legislation that's integrated disabled people into main stream life into public adom na accommodati accommodation. there is no i'm wheelchair user's worst enemy caucus. when the republican-led congress pursues stand alone bills on
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issues like this, they know they don't want to brag about this. nobody promised constituents they would make things harder for people when they got to washington. they like to do these things quietly. and often times these things proceed all the way through both republican controlled houses of congress to the president's desk without anybody making any noise about it at all except of course for the activists who represent the communities whose lives materially will get worse because of this rollback of some of the most successful civil rights legislation in american history. they are the ones who make noise. they are the ones who bring the house to a stop, make all the members of congress turn around to figure out what is going on. even when nobody inside the house is allowed to turn the camera toward the gallery to see them, they make themselves heard. on issues like this that congress wants to keep as low profile as possible, it's the outcry that's sometimes the only way we know these things are
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happening. they make sure there is no press for this stuff. there was another quiet little bill like this that passed congress one year ago today actually the first materially significant stand alone legislation that was passed after the 2016 election where republicans won control of the house and the senate and the white house. it was a stand alone, single purpose piece of legislation to make it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns. that's all it did. it passed through both houses of congress as of one year ago today, passed congress today. you've seen a million photos of president trump signing things. sometimes it's legislation. sometimes it's an executive order. sometimes it's a decision memo. sometimes it's random pieces of paper to look like he's accomplishing something when he's not. every time they can take an opportunity to show he's signing a thing, they take that
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opportunity except for the bill he signed that makes it easier for mentally ill people to access guns. cbs news reported that have repeatedly requested 12 different times that the white house released a photo of president trump signing that bill that eased up on the nation's restrictions on people who have been adjudicated for those to be mentally ill from accessing firearms. cbs news reports they asked 12 times for it. they report today a white house photographer has confirmed to them there are existing photos of trump signing that legislation about mentally ill people getting guns more easily. but the white house won't release any of those photos. it's almost like they don't want to admit the first material significant legislation this president signed was specifically and only designed to get more guns into the hands of more seriously mentally ill
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people. this of course, was president trump's response to yesterday's latest gun massacre. quote, so many signs that the florida shooter was mentally disturbed. so many questions about why anybody would take overt action to make sure people adjudicated to be seriously mentally disturbed could get guns more easily. but the president has never answered a question about that first materially significant legislation that he signed. the white house is dodging those questions even now. even now they are refusing to release the photo of president trump signing the legislation he signed. so they are not answering questions about it. they cancelled yesterday's white house press briefing. individual members of congress are having to answer questions here and there, though. msnbc caught up with chuck grassly to get his thoughts what the nation should do. this is his response.
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>> we have not done a very good job of making sure that people that have mental reasons for not being able to handle a gun getting their name into the fbi files and we need to concentrate on that. >> then he walked away. now senator grassly speaks in a sometimes elliptical manner. he can be hard to follow. he said we have not done a very good job of making sure that people that have mental reasons for not being able to handle a get getting their name into the fbi file asks we need to concentrate on that. that's what he said. to be perfectly and specifically clear here, senator chuck grassly was the lead sponsor in the u.s. senate of the bill that pasted one year ago today that had one specific purpose, which was to keep people who had been adjudicated as seriously mentally ill from having their names added to the fbi data base he's talking about right there.
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we haven't done a very good job making sure people who have mental reasons for not being able to handle a gun are getting their names into the fbi files. you have to go really far out of your way to choose as a legislative goal, people who are adjudicated to have serious debed debilitating illness to get guns from the database. that has to be a really specific legislative goal. you don't accidently hit that mark in a stand alone bill that does that. this is not any part of larger piece of legislation. this isn't a loophole. this is targeted legislation that did that and today he speaks in wonder and apparent outrage for some reason we can't get the names of the people with serious mental illness on the database. for some reason, he's personally and individually responsible for that being harder to do today than it was one year ago today.
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gun laws do not make themselves. we have the gun laws that we have today because of the lawmakers who we have today. none of them received our nation's gun laws on tablets on a mountain top. they are all in control of what gun laws we have. but if we were thinking they might reflect on that today in a mo moment of silence for american kids we murdered, they were scared away from doing their moment of silence because there were people with we'heelchairs d people that are blind and deaf that go out of their way to hurt americans. your tax dollars at work today. today was as much a day of rage as it was grief. in the aftermath of an event that shakes the country like yesterday's shooting did, though, there are political
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professionals among us with ice water in their veins who look at a tragedy like this and see opportunity. they see opportunity to dodge some of the consequences of unflattering news. the day after massacre of children is a good time to empty out the hamper, air out the dirty laundry that you don't particularly want people to focus on while worrying about bigger and more tragic things so "the new york times" was the lucky recipient of the long, long, long, delayed release of financial documents from the trump inauguration committee. that may seem like a picky concern. random accounting matter. why focus on that? the reason it's important, the reason it may not be a
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coincidence they release information on today of all days, the trump inaugural committee is run the way no other inaugural committee has been run. inaugural committees aren't supposed to be secretive and drag on and on and not supposed to be a source of increase, they never are. like that stand alone bill they passed today to attack the rights of disabled people and gut the ada or like that stand alone bill they passed to help mentally ill people get access to guns and an inaugural committee does one thing, they raise money once for a one-time event that is over in one day. and then when it's done, you know, they square up the acco t accoun accounts, close down and seize to exist for gigantic inaugurations like barack obamas in 2009, the committee fundraising setup, execution and
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shut down takes a few months. as financial things in washington go, this is one of the simplest financial things in washington. they open, they execute, they shut down. not the way it happened with the trump inauguration. trump inauguration for reasons we won't go into is a fairly small inauguration. not very many inaugural balls, no big events where hundreds of thousands of people went. at the parade, it was cold. a lot of stands were empty. there were lots of protesters. i mean, for this inauguration, though, the trump inaugural committee raised more than double the amount of money ever raised for any other inauguration. and that led to questions that could really only apply to this inauguration, mainly, where is the extra money because this was not a $100 million event. over the course of the past year, the inaugural committee
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for president trump refused to release the accounting. they said they were just about to put out the numbers. just about to put out the accounting. they will release the records and close up shop any day now. one time they even claimed they had just passed with flying colors a formal audit. annoyanuncing that raised the prospect we would be assured there is no funny business with any trump oriented slush fund with washington. they never released that audit. along with other news organizations, we've been trying for months to get any sort of accounting at all for what happened to that left over money. slash funds attract scandal so we're trying to figure out what happened to the money that must have gone along with the trump inauguration. it's a difficult slog. chairman of the committee is a close friend of the president. he's the one that announced the phantom audit and never released
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it. the treasurer of the committee never got back to us despite our attempts to contact him although that may have had something to do with the reporting. there was also the deputy chair rick gates. he was the deputy chairman facing multiple felony charges in federal court brought by robert mueller. we'll get back to him in a second. the information released indicates that the reason we haven't been able to find out what happened to the left over money from the inauguration is because there is almost no money left over from the trump inauguration, which is astonishing. they say they got two or three million left in the bank from $107 million that they raised.
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biggest inauguration ever was 50 million. how did they spend over $100 million on this particular inauguration that they put on? well, now we know part of how they spent that was by sending 26 million dollars to a company only created one month before the inauguration happened in december 2016 paid $26 million out of the fund. it a company created by donald trump's wife's good friend. she cleared over a million and a half dollars on the bill but her company cleared this guy began dick a gigantic amount of money. to be clear there is a general contractor that does every inauguration. this one for trump, both for obama, both for george w. bush, there is one big contracting firm always in charge for the
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inauguration, that company did the trump inaugural and they got paid $25 million to do it. that sort of makes sense. that's in keeping with other inaugurations but in addition to the general contractor that does the inaugurations getting paid $25 million, in addition to that this woman that knows melania trump also got paid another 25 million dollars. plus 1.5 million dollars herself and nobody is quite sure what that's all about. but maybe nobody will remember to ask about it. since they snuck the news out in the middle of an all encompassing show-stopping national tragedy. but i mentioned at the top here that there was important breaking news on the mueller investigation that actually relates to rick gates. who was the deputy chairman of the trump inauguration, the very unusual trump inaugural committee and the char main.
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rick gates was arrested in october and charged with multiple felonies alongside paul manafort. there have been rumblings there might be something going on. he dumped the first lawyer representing him for a couple weeks now there are intriguing and mostly secret court proceedings that made it seem like maybe he was dropping or getting dropped by his second legal team, as well. cnn caitlyn reported a third legal team led by tom green might be taking over rick gates' representation, and potentially negotiating a whole new relationship between rick gates and the prosecutor robert mueller. well tonight, polantz reports that rick gates, the president's campaign director is about to flip and become a corroborating witness for robert mueller. mueller already obtained a guilty plea and a cooperation
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agreement from trump foreign policy advisor george papadopoulos and mike flynn if he gets the deputy campaign chair on the campaign longer than paul manafort was, he was number two in charge of the trump inauguration. he was a frequent presence, if he flips, this would be the biggest development we would see in the mueller investigation since flynn and papadopoulos announced they would become cooperating witnesses. nbc news has not confirmed this reporting. they are siting multiple sources and they have got one super intriguing super specific detail about what has happened legally already between robert mueller and rick gates. it's a detail that we're definitely going to need an expert to explain. that part of the story and the
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you know what's not awesome? gig-speed internet. when only certain people can get it. let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. nbc news broke this scoop this afternoon, former white
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house senior strategist and campaign chief steve bannon met with special counsel robert mueller multiple times over the past week. quote, bannon spent a total of some 20 hours in conversations with robert mueller's team. after that nbc news scoop, the a.p. reports tonight based on a single source that quote bannon answered every question put to him by mueller's team. now 20 hours is a lot of testimony. that said, we have no idea what the questions were and mueller want that much testimony from steve bannon about but after that nbc news scoop from hallie jackson today, we got this breaking news from cnn tonight, that rick gates is finalizing a plea deal with the special counsel's office. quote, indicating he's poised to cooperate in the investigation. now special counsel has two cooperating witnesses so far. george papadopoulos and mike
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flynn. if this report is right and mueller is going to get a third witness, that's major advance in the special counsel's position in this investigation. that said, i'm not a lawyer and there is part of this reporting i need help. i need help understanding this part. this is cnn's report tonight quote. gates' has already spoken to mueller's team about his case and been in plea negotiations for about a month. gates' had what criminal lawyers call a queen for a day interview. what on god's green earth is a queen for a day interview? it sounds awesome. is this like -- all right. gates has had what criminal lawyers call a queen for a day interview in which a defendant answers any questions from the prosecutor's team including about his own case and other potential criminal activity he witnessed. in a queen for a day interview, a defendant can typically admit to crimes with little additional
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consequences unless he or she lies. after the queen for a day interview, there is only a small chance a defendant can turn back towards fighting the charges. all right. again, as a non-lawyer, i get that it would be a very big deal in the mueller investigation if mueller and his team are about to flip a witness, one there for the campaign and after manafort and the transition and beyond. that said, i have no idea what to make of this queen for a day interview stuff. luckily we're joined by former u.s. attorney barbara mcquaid who is plain spoken on these and other matters. barb, thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> queen for a day isn't a joke for us to look up something that has nothing to do with the law. queen for a day is a real thing? >> it is. it's an old-school thing. it comes from an old tv show, a game show from the '50s i think
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was on radio and television where women would compete to be queen for a day and win prizes by telling their sob stories but what it means is the witness or defendant comes in and in exchange for an agreement that none of those statements will be used against him answers all questions truthfully including questions that may implicate criminal behavior by himself. >> you have to tell the truth and you can't later take the stand and contradict when you say in this interview or they will use it against you. aside from those prospects, you're supposed to feel free to confess to anything you're involved in safe in the knowledge that it won't be used to put you in jail. >> yes, you have an incentive to be forthcoming because anything you say there can't be used against you so if you hold back and the prosecution finds out about something you did, you can be charged. it creates the incentive to be forthcoming. the only limitation is if you
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get caught lying, the deal is off and all those things you said can be used against you. >> do agreements and interviews like this happen in congestion with somebody needing guilty? a guilty plea, a plea deal has to be part of that negotiation? >> almost always, i'm not sure i ever seen somebody sit down and go through the process and back out of it. they could theoretically but once you've told the prosecution all of the bad things you've done and talked to them about bad conduct by other people, usually you've come to a point where you're ready to flip, to join the other team, to plead guilty to minimize your exposure in terms of sentencing. >> would there ever be a circumstance in which somebody came to an agreement to do this interview and talk to prosecutors in this way and change to a guilty plea because we know mr. gates pled not guilty to these charges but then they didn't also become a witness for the prosecution, a cooperating witness to help them
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build a case against another person or is that again part of this deal? >> it's certainly contemplated the person would be a witness. it may be the case later down the road he's not needed as a witness because the co-defendant pleads guilty for example. other witnesses are identified so they are no longer needed but it's contemplated they will testify. >> they are preparing new charges against gates. how should the prospect of new charg charges go? >> it's not surprising. as early where people speculated where are the tax charges. the tax charges would also be likely. the charges aren't ready.
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sometimes prosecutors hold back and say we'll allow you to plead guilty to the indictment as it exists today and continue to investigate and it might get worse for you later so an early plea has advantages to you and if there is no plea, they need to follow through on those promises that additional charges are forthcoming. wouldn't surprise me they have been working toward that and we might see it. it might frustrate the trial judge because new charges can sometimes cause a delay in the trial while the defense attorney prepares for additional charges. >> one last question for you, barb. my sense as a non-lawyer that the mueller investigation getting a third ocho ccooperati witness would be a big deal in terms of the overall investigation. am i right to see it that way? >> maybe gates in light of his position to the campaign chairman has information about connections between the campaign and russia but even if the sole basis of knowledge is about paul
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manafort and agrees to testify and cooperate, that could induce paul manafort to coopera prosec work their way up the chain and inches us closer toward getting into the trump orbit. >> you're exactly the person i knew could understand and explain this in a way to make me understand it. thank you for helping us through it. much appreciated. >> welcome. >> we're lucky to have her on deck for us. we have a lot of great lawyers but honestly, when there is something so complicated to the point it seems funny, barbara mcquaid is the person that will damn straight always make sense of it. we'll be right back. come on dad!
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i do recognize the optics of this are not good. i accept responsibility for that, and but i do believe it's important the united states continue its work with the ally countries. >> it's not the optics that are not good, it's the facts that are not good. >> optics, check. facts, check. but also the timing is terrible. veterans affair secretary would probably have picked any other day for his routine budget hearing on capitol hill but as luck would have it, his appearance came one day after a really quite scandalous inspector general's report about his conduct in office. conduct for which the trump
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so frank can focus on the beat. you hear that? this is frank's record shop. and this is where life meets legal. so over a month the report that the president's personal lawyer arranged a $130,000 payment to stormi daniels, we've been trying not to think about the president's sex life at all but the crucial question, who paid? who paid that money to storm iri daniels to make this go away? the denials in response to the wall street journal were about the sex side of the story but nobody bothered to overtly denied somebody paid ms. daniels before the election. the watchdog group common cause called on the fec and justice
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department to investigate this matter. they said the payment of $130,000 violated campaign finance laws because it wasn't reported on campaign filings and exceeded campaign contribution limits and clearly paid for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election. that complaint floated three possible original sources of the 130 grand that was paid to ms. daniels. their guesses for who paid, number one, the trump for president campaign committee. number two, the trump organization or number three, john doe, the unknown source of funds paid by essential consultants l.l.c., the name of the company reportedly set up by trump lawyer michael cohen to cut this check. so that was the complaint. two days ago this came out, trump's own lawyer said he paid ms. daniels out of his own
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pocket. what he actually said was quote, i used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to stephanie clifford, aka stormy daniels. nor the trump orizatiganizationa party to the transaction. he wasn't rebill ever iimbursed campaign but no idea if he was reimbursed by donald trump himself and when he says he used his own funds to facilitate the payment, honestly, that means he could have paid out-of-pocket for the stamp on the envelope with somebody else's check on side for that payment to get to the destination. so who paid? and there is also this matter now of why michael cohen would come out and admit this payment now. "the new york times" suggested in their report the statement was linked to a deadline requiring him to respond to the
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fec complaint that had been filed by common cause. that doesn't make sense, either. michael cohen does not appear to be one of the official respondents in that case. they seem surprised cohen admitted this information and also reached out to michael co-hin aco cohen why he volunteered this information if he didn't need to? he said i am the respondent, you really need to get your facts straight. she th he then told us to take this matter up with his attorney that never got back to us. is he john doe in the complaint? he is the ultimate source of funds? he didn't just facilitate the payment? did this violate campaign finance laws?
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joining us is the vice chair of the fec. i should point out she can't discuss this specific case in detail but she has more knowledge about these issues than anybody alive. thanks for being here. >> i'm not talking about any cases that may or may not be before the agency but if you want to talk about the law, i'm here for you. >> i want to talk about nothing pending before the commissioner that might go by the commission. can you give us a sense of how long it usually takes for the commission to decide whether it's going to take up a complaint such as this one? >> it really varies. whenever we get complaints, our lawyers will take a look at them and do an analysis for us and present a recommendation to the commission and then the commission depending on how many cases are in the queue ahead of them, sometimes it takes a little while before the commission can get to the point. we could vote just based on the
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recommendation on what we call tally but usually, somebody wants to talk about it. so we have to wait until there is an opportunity to discuss it at a scheduled meeting of the commission. >> now, in this case, which again you're not going to talk about directly, michael co-hhen says this a separate and apart from anything having to do with the campaign. in a general sense, what are the general factors that the commission looks at in deciding whether or not campaign finance laws are implicated, whether or not an expenditure of sometime or some sort of financial action of some kind has a link to a campaign? >> okay. again, not talking about -- >> as a general matter, how can you tell if something is related to a campaign? >> as a general rule, it's usually actually pretty transparent if a contribution is
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a contribution, is relate td to the campaign because it's usually a check or electronic transfer that goes to the campaign account but the law says that a gift, loan, advance, money, anything of value that is made for the purpose of influencing an election is a contributi contribution. so that's a fact-based determination as to whether a particular payment is for the purpose of influencing an election. >> as a legal matter, a check does not have to go into the coffers of a campaign specif specifically in order for that? >> we had someone paid the expense for the campaign considered the contribution to the campaign because the saved the campaign the expense for paying it for themselves. >> would you stay with us for a second?
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i have a couple other things you're the perfect person to ask and i feel like i'd like to hold on to you. would you mind? >> sure. >> the vice chair of the fec. we'll be right back with her. stay with us. with the most lobster dishes of the year. new dueling lobster tails has two tails that'll fight to be your favorite. one topped with creamy shrimp and scallops, the other... steamed with lemon and herbs. and no, you're not dreaming, classics like lobster lover's dream are back too, along with decadent new lobster truffle mac & cheese. but enough talking about lobster- let's get to eating! - because lobsterfest won't last. so dive in today at red lobster! a farmer's market.ve what's in this kiester. a fire truck. even a marching band. and if i can get comfortable talking about this kiester, then you can get comfortable using preparation h. for any sort of discomfort in yours. preparation h. get comfortable with it. ♪ do you want clean, stain free dentures? try polident. the four in one cleaning system kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria,
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. as i mentioned at the top of the show, today at long last we got a 116 page tax filing from the president's inaugural committee. the filing revealed, among other things that $25 million or so went to the general contractor who's run the recent inaugurals as well.
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but in addition another $25 million or so went to a firm run by the first lead, the firm that was formed a month before the inauguration happened. that's interesting. the committee reported all that to the irs, but the irs isn't the only agency with some degree of oversight. the other, the agency that heres from them first is the federal election commission. happy to say we're still joined by ellen weintraub. what kind of scrutiny to inaugural funds get? if there were something unexplained or inappropriate in inaugural tax filings or in the financial filings more generally, who would catch it? who would look at it? >> it's an interesting question because there isn't a lot of law or regulations that governs these committees. they have to report to us who their donors are but there's no
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requirement that they report where the money goes. and i think that's something that people might want to think about as they look forward to future inaugurations now that committees are raising so much money that maybe a little bit more transparency wouldn't be a bad thing. >> ellen weintraub vice chair of the federal election commission. thank you for being with us. you've been very enlightening in terms of how you approach your work. thank you very much. >> thank you, rachel. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. we do whatever it takes to fight cancer.
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a very senior member of the trump administration, a cabinet secretary is in hot water tonight over misuse of government funds. this is the same type of scandal that claimed the job of tom price a few months ago. it's the same scandal that's plaguing scott pruitt. who's recently found himself up a creek and unable to paddle around. his claim he has to fly first class on the taxpayer's dime because he's had interactions with people in coach that he's found unpleasant. it's the same scandal that ended the career of tom price. but in the case of va secretary tom shulkin, first there's a report out this week that includes he repeatedly lied about his travel and using government funds to pay for his
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wife. the report refers to the chief of staff for potential criminal prosecution. it stems from a trip he took his wife on last summer in july, for 10 days he had 3.5 days of work, but the rest of time was -- we have a list from the inspector reports, touring a pa las for the changing of the guard, visiting castles, taking a boat tour from a canal i cannot pronounce, shopping in k copenhag copenhagen, dinner in sweden, trips to buckingham palace and kensington pa las and a visit to tower bridge and the london eye, and windsor castle, all on the
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taxpayer dime. there's more, he took his wife to the wimbledon's final on the trip he said it was okay to accept the tickets because they were from a friend. but when they contacted the friend who provided him with the tickets he admitted to investigators in an interview that she didn't know shulkin's wife's name. and his staff charged taxpayers for $4,000 for which they described as airport parking. where did you park? nobody has explained that one yet. in the course of repairing this report, the inspector general referred him to the chief of staff of staff for altering paperwork, saying he was getting an award, he wasn't getting an
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award but he changed the e-mails to lie and say he did. the justice department decided not to pursue criminal prosecution. but not secretary shulkin, he suggested last night that maybe that e-mail was doctored by a hacker. huh? this morning secretary arrived on capitol hill for what was supposed to be a budget oversight hearing. watch his response when a lawmaker suggested they should take the hacking quite seriously. >> i would say before moving to the budget the allegations of a potential hacking of a va computer system with ill intent is a serious matter. p i would ask you, mr. secretary, we're prepared to ask the department of justice to look into that if you feel that's appropriate and we'll see if that's the appropriate action to go on.
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>> oh, you would like to look at which now? i said my chief of staff couldn't have messed up that e-mail, it must have been ha hacked. you're going to send it to the justice department for investigation. okay. that's serious. tonight it's reported that the congressman has referred the allegation of hacking to the justice department for investigation. meanwhile, these can't be fun days for va secretary david shulkin, the taxpayer funded trip to europe with his wife might have been fun but these days are no fun at all. now it's time for the "last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> good evening rachel. remember for candidate trump there was nothing more important than fixing the va. and now $4,000 in airport parking to me is the